The Entrepreneurs Hub

THE KNOWLEDGE HUB FOR STARTUPS AND SMEs

We support start-ups and SMEs on how to start, grow and run a sustainable business with a focus on strategic, operational and commercial excellence. The Hub East Africa is not a traditional incubator, but a novel concept putting the success of the entrepreneur at the core of its business.

The Hub East Africa is a knowledge centre that exists to inspire and cultivate professional entrepreneurship among startups and SMEs from diverse sectors in the East African economy. As an organization that is actively involved in a day to day engagement with entrepreneurs, it is our core business to support businesses to start, grow and scale into sustainable enterprises. We are not an incubator in the traditional sense but a knowledge hub providing trainings and other programs and activities to entrepreneurs focusing on strategic, operational and commercial excellence. In addition we provide the full eco-system consisting of desk/office space and financing solutions through the different partnerships we have established.

We regard entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in high esteem as a driver of change, development and progress. Entrepreneurs build businesses that create value, employment opportunities and deliver crucial services and products where it is needed most. We believe in entrepreneurs being the silent motor of our economy. In an economy that has the ambition to take up opportunities, it is our mission to support entrepreneurs to take full advantage and own up to their potential.

Spotlight on

Apollo Eric of Point50Capital

by Kendi Gikunda

Today we sat down and had a chat with Apollo Eric of Point50Capital. This is a guy who cycles to work, IN NAIROBI. He runs, roller blades and does yoga. He is up by 3:00 am or 4:00 am Kenyan time depending on what he is doing on that day. He has so much energy you would feel unhealthy looking at him.

Let’s start at the beginning: what did you study?

I studied Medical Biotechnology but I focused on IT. I attended classes with Computer Science students and I knew I loved IT from early on so I devoted a lot of my time in IT classes even those that weren’t necessary just to gain the knowledge.

How did you get into IT and entrepreneurship?

I have never had a normal job like an 8-5. I was an entrepreneur from early on. When I was a teenager I was a hawker to make money to support my family, pay for my school fees and those of my siblings.

After I got my degree I couldn’t get a traditional job as much as I wanted to, apart from contractual work here and there as an IT freelancer. Tired of dropping my CV’s everywhere getting back to the house around noon, I would go online to do trading. That’s how I learned to trade: online. Just in case anyone will be reading this and thinks online trading is a quick fix to getting rich: think twice before you start! The first few years I lost as much as I gained and I was one of the more lucky ones! It is very easy to get lost in the excitement, overcommit and lose all you have.

Read the full interview here (including recommended resources on blockchain).

Blockchain Summit

Point50Capital is proud to co-host the World Blockchain Summit

The Entrepreneurs Hub has partnered with Point50Capital to introduce the blockchain technology and its applications for SMEs with the Blockchain Playground.

Start – Grow – Scale

The Statistics

90

% of startups fail

42

% lacked a market need for their product

29

% ran out of cash

If you think about it: why would you expect from a business to survive if there is no market need for the product? Because thats what the statistics tell us: 42% of startups fail because they can’t find enough customers to sell their product to. In that light, it is not surprising that another 29% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Be careful to confuse cash (working capital to keep going) with funding (investment to get started or scale). This leads to another interesting fact worth mentioning: only 10% of businesses that bootstrap say they failed because they run out of cash.

Knowing this, is there any way you as an entrepreneur can prepare yourself to avoid falling into the “failure” category? Asking the question is answering it: yes! We have carefully designed programs for different stages of business development.

Find out what program is right for you with our

PERSONAL COACHING

ACTIVITIES

Hubcubation is not just another program, you are really pushed to be your best – more even than you realised you had in you

 Nyokabi Mwangi, Tosheka Textiles 

.

Hubcubation is a 6-month program designed for entrepreneurs who have been in business for 1-3 years and want to take their startup to the next level of professionalism and sustainability. The program has a 360′ approach build on three pillars: knowledge, network and mentor/coaching. In ten workshops you will go through all elements required to run a business: from strategy to operations, from marketing to management. The workshops are very practical in their application: we use proven business concepts and frameworks to support you understanding the industry that you’re in, developing the right strategy to become better at selling the right product to the right customer at the right time at the right price. It will support you to operationalize your strategy, making your business profitable consistently.

Daily Sparks

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13 NOVEMBER

FINDING YOUR PASSION IS EASY

FINDING YOUR PASSION IS EASY

13 NOVEMBER

Passion is one of the three key success factors in running a startup: you need to have a market for your product or service (opportunity), you need to have the knowledge how to make it happen and you need to have the passion as to why you are doing what you’re doing. To quote Steve Jobs: “You have to have a lot of passion for what you do…because if you don’t, any rational person would give up.”

Here lies the crux of the matter: you need passion because running a business needs perseverance, it needs imagination to drive the business forward when things don’t go according to plan. But passion isn’t this overarching purpose of being. It is not the holy grail that makes your business fly easy. Passion in entrepreneurship is really another word for having the interest to keep going even when times are tough.

SPARK OF THE DAY:

We all love Sir Richard Branson, an entrepreneur who seems to only do things he is passionate about. When we look closer, we see that all his ventures are centred around his passion for excellent customer service. He didn’t create Virgin Money or Virgin Atlantic because of his passion for the banking or airline industry, but because he saw a great opportunity for revamping their customer service.

10 NOVEMBER

EXPERIENCE THE MAGIC OF MOVING FORWARD

EXPERIENCE THE MAGIC OF MOVING FORWARD

10 NOVEMBER

Two client signature meetings and a meeting confirming an international partnership and still the entrepreneur I was having a drink with felt he had wasted his day. He could have done so much more! I bet that looking at the facts he will see he reached some mayor milestones that day, but why didn’t he have that feeling in the moment?

As entrepreneurs we’re always moving forward, starting the next project, closing the next deal. We take weeks or months trying to convince prospective clients to do business with us. The closure of the sales process with the client comes at the time when often we already started the actual work for that customer and the signing of the contract is merely a formality. And formalities are nothing to celebrate…

SPARK OF THE DAY:

Do not ever let the signature of a client or another major milestone become “just a formality”. No matter how long you took to get them on board, signing new clients should always be a moment of celebration.”It’s about time” doesn’t do justice to the hard work you put in!

Don’t just look at the future and where you “should have been”; also look at the past and realise where you have come from.

9 NOVEMBER

DON'T LIVE A DREAM... LIVE REALITY

DON'T LIVE A DREAM... LIVE REALITY

9 NOVEMBER

180 Million. Not Kenyan Shilling. US Dollar. 180 Million US Dollars did the entrepreneur I met with today need to get his business off the ground. Was he an experienced business man you may ask; did he have several ventures to his name showing his capabilities? Nope. The entrepreneur I met with today was fresh out of university. Did he have a prototype to his name you may ask; did he have a pilot project to show for? Nope. No prototype. No proof of concept. Just the ask for 180 Million US Dollars.

As an avid reader of this daily spark I hope you will smile at the naiveté of the entrepreneur. We might have been there ourselves when we tried to get our first ever project started. The 180 Million US Dollars merely testifies to the grandeur of the dream the starting entrepreneur had. Your dream might be less expensive in absolute value, but I bet it occupies as much space in your mind.

SPARK OF THE DAY:

The bigger the dream, the bigger the picture; and the bigger the picture, the harder it is to zoom in. The only way to make a dream a reality is to stop dreaming: break the project into smaller parts and tangible steps and go lean. Bootstrap to get people excited and the momentum going. Create something to show for…

If you stay too long in the dream it will turn into an entrepreneur’s worst nightmare: death by greatness; death by paralysis…

8 NOVEMBER

IF IT WAS EASY, EVERYBODY WOULD BE DOING IT

IF IT WAS EASY, EVERYBODY WOULD BE DOING IT

8 NOVEMBER

The success of a starting company does not so much lie with the idea but with its execution. I think nobody reading this daily spark will think differently. We’re all living the daily proof that life of an entrepreneur is full of trial and error. Coming up with an idea might happen as many times as several times a day if inspiration is flowing; turning one of these ideas into the idea is just the beginning of a long long journey.

Entrepreneurship is oftentimes a lonely affair. It needs stamina and conviction to keep going. In there lies directly the beauty of the journey as well: the fact that you’re alone means you’ve chosen the path of the “blue ocean”: no sharks; no competition… also: no-one to follow! No-one to copycat making life easy for you…

SPARK OF THE DAY:

Don’t get discouraged if you’re encountering hardship; it might be a sign that you’re on the right track to success. One of my favourite poems reads (free translation from Spanish): “Don’t go where the path may lead you; create your own trail and find you’ve created the path.”.

Someone has to be the first to go where you are going… you have chosen that person to be you! Go with pride!

7 NOVEMBER

THE ONE PERSON TO BLAME FOR MEDIOCRITY...

THE ONE PERSON TO BLAME FOR MEDIOCRITY...

7 NOVEMBER

What is better: running a company fuelled by 3 established bright minds or one fuelled by the 3 plus 10 superstars that have the potential to become bright minds for your company? What seems like a slam-dunk answer is actually quite a tricky question with an answer that ends up being somewhere in the grey middle.

You can only grow your company so much when you have a limited team. The upside though is that you can grow without loosing control: incremental growth might sound not so sexy, but growing from a comfortable base serving your existing customers with the regards they signed-up for, while adding new customers when you’re ready to serve them counts as win-win. Growing exponentially and taking advantage of all the opportunities coming your way might create chaos and disrupt your existing foundation of customers.

SPARK OF THE DAY:

Sometimes it is better to take things slow: go from 3 to 6 employees to ensure sufficient back-up and quality control to sustain consistency. Then from 6 you grow to 12 after which growth is more easy to scale. Not simply because you now have enough experience to start creating on-boarding processes and procedures, but because all key leadership positions will be filled with their back ups ensuring continuation.

In short: don’t dilute your staff to keep up with opportunities, but take on opportunities that match the quality and the quantity that your staff can handle without having to level down. In the end: your company is only as strong as its weakest link.

6 NOVEMBER

DO YOU WANT WHAT YOU HAVE?

DO YOU WANT WHAT YOU HAVE?

6 NOVEMBER

The Lean Startup; Bootstrapping; Customer Funded Innovation… these are three different ways to start a business with what you have available to you at the time of inception. You grow organically until you have a proven proof of concept after which you grow and scale with or without external investment depending on the type of business you run. Contrary to what the happy startup eco-system makes us want to believe, this is actually the way how most of us entrepreneurs start out. Keeping things Lean and Agile.

Be careful to not fall into the trap of keeping things too lean and too agile though. To make your vision come true you have to go after what you really want; you might have to go beyond what’s lean and agile.

SPARK OF THE DAY:

Sometimes being too realistic and too practical might make you loose sight of what it is you wanted to accomplish. If a key happiness and success factor is missing right at the beginning, it might be worth to sacrifice a bit of realism for the sake of making the vision actually come alive. If that means making an unaffordable investment or foregoing easy revenue, so be it…

Sometimes you don’t just start with what you have, you start with what you WANT TO HAVE!